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On Thursday night, Mar 25, majority people maylook up at the sky and ask the question, Whats that splendid star subsequent tothe moon?
The answer for Thursday night is Mars, butthat answer changes night by night as the moon travels along theecliptic, the trail the sun, moon and planets follow opposite the sky. If youask the subject again on Monday night, Mar 29, the answer will be the ringedplanet Saturn.
Such conjunctions of the moon and planets areregular reminders of how fast the moon moves opposite the sky.
Mars was in antithesis to the Sun on Jan. 29,when it appeared fourteen arcseconds in diameter, 1/120 of the hole of the moon.Two months later, it is majority over away, and has shrunk to usually 10 arcsecondsin diameter.
This will be your last possibility to get a goodlook at Mars until it approaches the Earth again in 2012 [see some-more Mars photos].
The sky these open evenings presents astriking contrariety in between the horse opera half, filled with the splendid stars andconstellations of winter, and the eastern half, with Regulus the usually brightstar. Mars sits in unique fame in Cancer, one of the majority insignificantzodiac constellations, only on top of the craft of the Milky Way.
But there is majority sneaking over the dimstars of spring, for we are entering the area of the galaxies. Theconstellation Leo alone contains five of the brightest galaxies in CharlesMessiers important 18th century catalogue of deepsky objects.
When we see towards Leo, we are lookingabove the craft of the Milky Way universe at the inlet of intergalactic space,unhindered by the clouds of dust and gas that fill the galaxy.
Images Mars: The Red Planet Top 10 Extreme Planet Facts More Night Sky Features from Starry Night EducationThis essay was supposing to by Starry Night Education, theleader in space scholarship curriculum solutions.
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